


Night Companions

by orchid314



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Ficlet, Gen, John Watson in Afghanistan, Nightmares, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-04
Updated: 2019-07-04
Packaged: 2020-06-03 18:47:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 264
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19469944
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orchid314/pseuds/orchid314
Summary: Watson couldn't breathe.





	Night Companions

**Author's Note:**

> For the Watson's Woes 2019 July Writing Prompt 3: Bloody weather!: Include some meteorological elements in today's entry.
> 
> This ficlet includes a reference to violent death.

Watson couldn't breathe. London was damnable in this heat.

Pause. Lie quite still. Wait for the wavering nightmare to pass one by. It might if one lay silent enough.

The heat kept pressing him down into the bed. But it wasn't the heat. It was Llewellyn –beautiful Llewellyn – pressed chest to chest against him in the secret dark of his tent, with his mussed hair and sweat and neck bent in close to smear with eager lips. Watson's favourite fever dream in Afghanistan.

But it wasn't the heat alone or his idle fantasy, was it? That pressed him down. No, it was one of the stretcher-bearers who lay heavy across Watson's prostrate body now. Whose name Watson never asked and now would never know. One of the stretcher-bearers who dissolved into shadow and air when the bomb fell like a burning star upon the field hospital at Maiwand.

The stretcher-bearers weren't going away, were they? They would always follow him, travelling alongside Watson throughout his life, there to greet him whenever he shut his eyes on oppressive nights such as this, when the heat draped a blanket over him, pinning him down, holding him down.

This Holmes fellow. If he thought he had a recuperating war veteran on his hands, then he didn't know the half of it. Watson could hear the man in the sitting room below, the high clink of glass, a chair scraping against floor, and something that might have been a lamp rushing to life when lit.

Hold still. Hold quite still. And wait for exhaustion to close one's eyes.


End file.
